October 2013  e-ISSN: 1857-8187  p-ISSN: 1857-8179
Research paper
Linguistics
Unfolding the Differences in Reporting News
with an Eye on Translation and Semiotics
Huda Yaseen AbdulWahid
Keywords: Semiotics, politics,
translation, news, signs, vagueness.
Cihan University. Iraq-Erbil.
Abstract
Although most of the people focus on the written message and forget about other non-verbal messages, some
researchers keep looking for other signal that might send some messages but are stronger enough to affect the readers.
This research is an attempt to figure out the size of the blackout that we experience in the world concerning reporting
news. The reasons behind such vagueness are the factors encompassed in delivering the news like the translator’s
viewpoint and signs translation. The semiotic approach has been used to shed light on these elements and to raise the
attention of readers before taking every little news guaranteed.
I. Introduction
1.1 What is semiotics?
Semiotics is the study of signs and emerged in a literary or linguistic context through the work of
two theorists: the Swiss Linguist Fredinand de Saussure (1857-1913) and the American
philosopher Charles Saunders Peirce (1839-1914). Saussure divides a sign into two components –
the signifier (the sound, image, or word) and the signified (the concept the signifier represents, or
the meaning). For Pierce a sign is of a triadic nature. It consists of a representamen which stands
for an object, interpretant,’ somebody’ and ground ‘some respect’. Therefore, a sign stands for
something (representamen), to somebody (interpretant), in some respect (ground). And to be able
to figure out the meaning of every sign (word), we are in need of an interpretation or translation.
Susan Petrilli (n.d.) says that sign activity or semiotics is a translation process and he agrees with
Peirce that signs don’t exist without an interpretant and that the meaning of a sign can only be
expressed by another sign acting as its interpretant, translation is constitutive of the sign. Susan
(2013) says that translation is not only a practice, but also a method of interpretation and
understanding, of investigation and discovery, of verification and acquisition of new knowledge,
and as such is also a method of critique. Moreover, translation theory can also be a theory that
reflects on sign and meaning. Such an approach can contribute to a better understanding of the
practice of translation. Evangelos Kourdis (2007) explains semiotics as a way to understand the
meaning through the translation process since semiotics considers translation as a sociocultural
phenomenon. Translation activity in culture cannot take place in isolation from experience of
culture and technological development. The interpretation of words is affected by the speaker, the
audience, and the cultural background of them both. Victoria Welby (1837-1912) describes man’s
capacity for signification in terms of “translative thinking.” Translated into semiotic terms we can
say that translative thinking is a semiotic process in which something stands for something else, in
which different sign systems are related, in which one sign is more fully developed, enriched,
criticized, put at a distance, and in any case , interpreted in terms of another sign( Petrilli,1992).
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Wittgensten (1989) describes the translation process as semiosis. It takes as its point of departure
the (simple or complex) verbal sign (such as a word, sentence, or text) as referring to its object (or
set of objects). Tracing back the particular way in which a sign is encoded (its ground) is followed
by the creation, in the mind, of an interpretant, the meaning of which is equivalent to, or more
developed version, of the meaning of the first sign. He says that semiosis in the language-game of
translation means that the interpreter/ translator interprets and translates in fact his or her own
interpretants. Therefore, the translator embodies the sign user or interpreter which Peirce did not
include as an explicit fourth component of semiosis, in addition to the interpretant. Sutiste and
Torop (2007:196) talk about the translation semiotics, a discipline that, as part of semiotics,
engages in comparative analysis of sign systems and functional relations between different sign
systems and, as an autnonmous discipline, provides the means to distinguish and discern of sign
system translatability.
Evangelos Kourdis (2007) makes a comparison between two advertisements in terms of
translation in two different languages; Greek and English. He has focused on the semiotic role of
translation in advertising. He has pinpointed that the use of English connotes a west-European
modus vivendi encompassing style, travelling and shopping. Especially in Greece, the use of
English in the transmitted message aims to affect consumers implicitly and enticing them to adopt
the whole life style that is, somehow, different to their tradition and culture. Besides, he has
figured out that the use of the sign system of chromatics is very important for the preservation of
aesthetic equivalence of the advertisement. Therefore the translation process includes the
translation of verbal and non-verbal signs taking into consideration the fact that the linguistic
message occupies only ¼ of the advertisement which connotes that for the advertisers the
intersemiotic translation is more important than the interlingual translation. Gottlieb (2005) says
that any kind of translation is a multi-faceted entity, and even the word ’translation’ covers at least
two dimensions: (1) time, including the semantics and temporal progression of the translational
process and (2) space, including the semiotics and texture, or composition, of the translational
product. He adds that the process of translation involves a chain of disparate and consecutive
entities, ranging from the conceiver(s) of the original text, via the text itself to the receivers of the
translated version of it. Even the translational product is a complex notion. As a simultaneously
presented synthesis of signs constituting either a mono- or polysemiotic text, the translated text
encompasses much more than the rephrasing of original verbal utterances. Even in the case of
’words-only’ – i.e. monosemiotic – texts, other factors than verbal semantics form part of
translational products. Translation is described by Welby as ‘inter-translation, a method of
interpretation and understanding and is related to reflection on signs and meaning (1983 [1903], p.
120). And semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything
which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else. This something else does not
necessarily have to exist to actually be somewhere at the moment in which a sign stands for it (
Eco,1976). The role of translation, therefor, is to find out the implied meaning. And given that
translative processes are structural to sign processes as they develop across systemic and
typological boundaries, the question of translation from a significal perspective is no less than
structural to the theory of meaning (cited by Petrilli,2007).
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2. The reason behind using this speech:
Within the trend of the Arab spring that prevails the Arab world starting with Tunisia and ending
with Syria, President Obama has delivered many speeches concerning it especially after
pretending that the President Bashar Al.Assad has used chemical weapons against Syrians. The
speech under scrutiny is catchy enough since it has been translated by many channels. In each
one, we can notice the difference in terms of the title , the images, and the context. To figure out
the reason behind these differences, I will follow the method used by Kourdis in his paper entitled
with “the semiotic role of translation in advertising. The case of bilingual advertisement from a
comparative aspect”
3. The interlingual translation of the speech message
The motivation behind devising an interlingua was the long-lived belief that while languages
differ greatly in their “surface structures”, they all share a common “deep structure”. Hence arose
the idea of creating a universal representation capable of conveying this deep structure while
enjoying the regularity and predictability natural languages lack. In order to be capable of
representing natural language content, an interlingua should be, first, unambiguous; it should be
more explicit even than the natural language it is representing (Al.Ansary,n.d). It also involves
two equivalent messages in two different codes. I try to make a kind of equivalence between the
source text and the target text in an attempt to increase the communication efficiency (Van
Kesteren as cited by Kourdis, 2007). In my research, I try to find out whether the interlingual
translation increases or decreases the communication efficiency and in which way. The first
semiotic observation deals with the language deals with the language which appears first. In the
English version, the speech is full of pictures and the font is different which gives an impression
how much this speech is important. The Arabic version, on the other hand, is quite short and no
difference in the font has been noticed which reflects the marginalization in reporting news.
3.1 The translation of the advertisement’s title
The first thing to be said about the title of the English version is the use of the verb (say) which
has been translated into ‫ ) )اوضح‬. The aforementioned verb cancels the option of explanation and
reflects the idea that how much President Obama was brief in his speech. Besides the deletion of
the phrase “back from the brink” in the Arabic version and the addition of ( ‫لكنه أضاف أن هدف عمل‬
‫عسكري محدود سيكون ردع استخدام أسلحة كيماوية في المستقبل‬.) The deletion of “Back from the brink” has
the reference to the Iraqi dilemma and the chaos and disturbance that have been created after
waging war against Iraq in 2003. Its deletion is due to the fact that the Arab world all know and
still live the aftermath of the war against Iraq while its existence in the English version has the
connotation of reminding Barak of this action in order to think thoroughly before doing an action
that leads to loss of people and money. The addition of ( ‫لكنه أضاف أن هدف عمل عسكري محدود سيكون‬
‫ردع استخدام أسلحة كيماوية في المستقبل‬.) has the connotation of assuring the Arab world and showing the
good intention of president Obama and how much he cares about the interest of people and his
neighbors Israel, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq.
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3.2 The translation of the speech’s principal message
The first thing comes to our mind when we look at the translation of the principal message is that
there is no a quantitative equivalence between the English and the Arabic versions. The English
version contains more than 100 words while the Arabic version less than 70 words. The addition
of some details concerning the interviewers , the channel and the position of the president indicate
the importance of the interviewee and the time spent for the preparation of such an interview.
Besides it connotes the significance of the context of the speech which talks about the existence of
mass destruction weapons and possibility of waging a military war against a country has its own
position in the region and the repercussions of it on the countries in the region. In addition, the
report is accompanied by a picture of the president Obama and the American flag is located behind
him in an attempt to show how much he is patriotic and he cares for the interest of American
people. Furthermore, we see in the English version the opinions of others like parliament,
commons, and the British prime minister which indicate that the president cannot do anything
alone and the democratic approach is followed in any case. Moreover, some other pictures for the
demonstrations and the activists have been added to show the democracy atmosphere and the
given right for the expatriates. The Arabic version ,however, is brief enough and no more details
concerning anything except the president and the airstrike on Syria. This briefness connotes that
Arab community does not care for all these details and even the airstrike against Syria since each
country in the middle east is busy enough with arranging the interior situation of its own people
and has a lot of challenges to be faced. Concerning the pictures of activists, people might get
angry once they see them since those activists cannot feel the hunger, the misery, and the lack of
safety that Syrian people live unless they come to Syria and see what is going on the ground.
Below are the examples of the translation of the speeches’ principal message.
The English version:
President Obama said that he has not made a decision yet regarding a possible U.S. strike against
Syria. The president said that allegations that his Syrian counterpart, Bashar as-Assad, used
chemical weapons on civilian populations would factor into his calculation and he warned that
Assad should be held accountable
The Arabic version:
‫ إن لدى إدارته تأكيدات بشأن استخدام دمشق لألسلحة الكيماوية في الهجوم الذي وقع في‬،‫ الخميس‬،‫وقال أوباما في لقاء تلفزيوني‬
.‫ وأدى إلى مقتل المئات و فقا لمصادر في المعارضة السورية‬،‫الغوطة بريف العاصمة قبل عدة أيام‬
‫ وأن األعراف الدولية تحرم استخدام تلك النوعية‬،‫وأشار الرئيس األميركي إلى أن دمشق تمتلك أكبر مخزون كيماوي في العالم‬
.‫من األسلحة‬
The use of “allegations” in the English version indicates nothing has been confirmed concerning
the use of chemical weapons by Bashar al-Assad. It also indicates that the airstrike against Syria
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Research paper
has not been approved. The Arabic version, however, has translated it into “‫ ”تاكيدات‬which reveals
that the war against Syria is out of debate.
3.3 The translation of the speeches’ explanatory part
The main point to be discussed here is to explain any behavior seen. In these speeches, I have
seen the use of apostrophes for lexical items that are not with apostrophes in the source text. For
example, in the Arabic version the civil war has become “‫ "الحرب االهلية‬which connotes the
situation in Lebanon that took place late seventies and beginning of eighties and how hard was it
and people are still living the aftermath. The other example is “we want the Assad regime to
understand that by using chemical weapons on a large scale against your own people, against
women, against infants, against children, you are not only breaking international norms and
standards of decency , but you are also creating a situation where U.S. national interests are
affected, and that needs to stop which becomes ‫وأوضح الرئيس األميركي أن معاقبة حكومة الرئيس األسد "لن‬
‫ هذا األمر لن يضع حدا لسقوط قتلى في صفوف المدنيين األبرياء في سوريا‬،‫ بالتأكيد‬.‫"تحل كل المشاكل في سوريا‬
‫وأضاف قائال في مقابلة مع شبكة التلفزيون األميركية العامة إن التحرك بشكل واضح وحاسم لوقف استخدام اسلحة كيماوية في‬
‫سوريا "يمكن أن يكون له تأثير ايجابي على أمننا القومي على المدى الطويل‬."
This has a reference to the point that Mr. Obama has no intention to punish his counterpart Bashar
al-Assad since it will not stop the massacre against Syrians. The actions, however, must be taken
to stop the use of chemical weapons since it has a direct impact on our national security.
3.4 The translation of the speeches’ informative part
The last part of the interlingual translation has to do with the translation of the speeches’
informative part, which provides information on how to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria
without making any conflict in the Middle East. This action requires a hastily preparation of a
military strike against Syria. Mr. Obama made it clear that the presence of a major stockpile of
chemical weapons in a volatile country like Syria with known ties to terrorists organizations could
present a real threat to the U.S. . The Arabic version, however, mentions that
" ‫ الروس‬،‫نأمل التوصل الى مرحلة انتقالية في نهاية المطاف بسوريا ونحن مستعدون للعمل مع كل العالم‬
‫ وأوباما الذي عارض قبل‬."‫ واآلخرون في محاولة لجمع االطراف بهدف التوصل الى حل النزاع‬10 ‫سنوات اجتياح العراق من‬
‫ وتحدث‬.‫ رفض مسبقا قيام اية مقارنة تاريخية‬،‫قبل ادارة سلفه الجمهوري جورج بوش االبن الذي تخطى موافقة األمم المتحدة‬
‫"أوباما عن " مقاربة محدودة كي ال نجد انفسنا متورطين في نزاع طويل وعدم تكرار تجربة العراق االمر الذي يقلق الكثيرين‬.
These two messages differ in one point that in the English version has no place for any
comparison between the Iraqi situation and the Syrian one. This comparison has a connotation
that America is ready to the repercussions of waging war against Syria and the U.S. now is
stronger than ten years later. This strength comes from the assistance of Israel since its situation
will be deteriorating if Assad remains in his position with some strikes against Julan which is
occupied by Israel. The other non-verbal sign is the use of apostrophes which indicates how much
this channel is brief enough in reporting the news. This briefness has an indication that the speech
community is fed up with listening to politicians’ speeches which are full of lies.
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4. The intersemiotic translation of the speeches’ message
Intersemiotic translation, the interpretation of a verbal sign( the linguistic message) by means of
signs of non-verbal sign system( an image), is an important type of translation in the political
speech since the images are powerful in the semiotic system. It takes place from the moment when
a text is transformed into a performance, that is, when it is staged. The staged or theatrical text is
already, in itself, an intersemiotic translation. The difficulties in staging a text is surmounted
through the new directions theatre has taken, using codes of other systems, and arguing that the
performances have the power to activate the imagination, in a different though not more efficient
way, than the written text (Diniz,n.d.). This transmutation presupposes that the source language is
the text itself ( the verbal language) so this study will consider the English and the Arabic versions
of news as a source language and the symbolic message of the speeches as a target language. This
shows the duality feature of intersemiotic translation. That is, there are two language sources with
equivalent messages, English and Arabic, and there are two kinds of transmutation , one including
pictures and more details and the other including no pictures and briefness.
More analytically, the principal speeches’ messages have been translated interlinguistically and
intersemiotically. The English version
President Obama said that he has not made a decision yet regarding a possible U.S. strike against
Syria. The president said that allegations that his Syrian counterpart, Bashar as-Assad, used
chemical weapons on civilian populations would factor into his calculation and he warned that
Assad should be held accountable
Has been translated into the Arabic version:
‫ إن لدى إدارته تأكيدات بشأن استخدام دمشق لألسلحة الكيماوية في الهجوم الذي وقع في‬،‫ الخميس‬،‫وقال أوباما في لقاء تلفزيوني‬
.‫ وأدى إلى مقتل المئات و فقا لمصادر في المعارضة السورية‬،‫الغوطة بريف العاصمة قبل عدة أيام‬
‫ وأن األعراف الدولية تحرم استخدام تلك النوعية‬،‫وأشار الرئيس األميركي إلى أن دمشق تمتلك أكبر مخزون كيماوي في العالم‬
.‫من األسلحة‬
It is obvious that some of these verbal signs are translated by iconic signs only because they are
part of some speeches’ connotation since some of them may have other connotations. For
example, the word” allegations” “‫ ”تاكيدات‬and “his counterpart” “‫”دمشق‬, and we know that they
refer to Mr. Obama’s intention to strike Syria through the intersemiotic translation in comparison
with the linguistic message. However, this kind of intersemiotic translation is not a one-way
translation since comprehending the messages requires getting into consideration the whole
context and situation. Thus , the one-way translation, verbal sign to non-verbal sign is adequate
but we have to mention that other linguists insist that intersemiotic translation is not only the result
of the translation of a verbal language to a non-verbal one, but is also the reverse and, in addition,
the translation of a non-verbal language using another non-verbal language (Kourdis, 2007)
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Picturing is a system of internal codification that concerns the use of pictures. It is a way of
reading based on the selective signification. In this research, it is clear that there is symbolism of
pictures that allows especially for the linguistic message to be connoted through the system of
pictures. As such, we can see the background of Mr. Obama which shows the flag of America that
connotes the fidelity of him to his country. Another picture shows the demonstrations that prevail
the U.K. protesting against the war which shows the democratic atmosphere provided by the
European countries.
5. Concluding remarks
Code-switching is a linguistic phenomenon that is observed in interpersonal communication
between bilinguals( Abalhassan and Alshalawi,2000). According to Gumpertz (1966), code
switching is an alternation among different speech varieties within the same event (as cited by
Kourdis, 2007). In this research, the same event which is waging war against Syria is the same
content in two languages that are English and Arabic. The research has used Obama’s interview
with PBS NewsHour talking about America plans concerning Syria and its translation into Arabic
Language by Nile channel to show how the translation plays an important role in deceiving people
and sometimes turning the facts. The translation includes translation of verbal and non-verbal
signs and since there is no equivalence in the political message, translation can never say the same
thing but it can say almost the same thing which seems to correspond to this observation. The
study comes out with the following remarks:
A) Intersemiotic translation is considered ambiguous when the speakers use pictures and
figures that have sociological features which affect receivers’ comprehension.
B) Total quantitative equivalence seems to be necessary in the translation process especially
for the title which plays an affective role on the readers.
C) The fact that the linguistic message occupies a small area indicates that the intersemiotic
translation is more significant than the interlingual translation.
From the above points, the study concludes that the role on interlingual translation looks to be
complementary to other semiotic systems and not the most affective. The power of the non-verbal
sign system, especially of the pictures, makes interlingual translation a secondary, but necessary,
factor in the transmission of a political message.
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